


The Best Mistake Ever

by GracefulWolf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Adoption, Alternate Universe, Dad Castiel, Dean is good with babies, Fatherhood, M/M, a bit of a mix-up, dad!Cas, parenting is a lot of work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5411330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GracefulWolf/pseuds/GracefulWolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is feeling overwhelmed. Raising a baby girl on your own is a lot of work, especially when you weren’t expecting to become a father in the first place. He loves being the sole provider and caretaker for his daughter, but he admits he needs a little help.</p><p>However, when Cas calls for a nanny service amidst a nonstop screamfest, there’s a little bit of mix up.</p><p>(AN: One shot for now.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Mistake Ever

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Castiel is a new father who's left holding the baby. Desperate for help, he calls an agency. Twenty-four hours later he opens his front door to Dean Winchester.
> 
> Dean's car broke down for the first time in his life, outside a house in Pontiac, Illinois. Unable to get it started, he reluctantly heads for the house in hopes of calling family friend Bobby, to come tow it home.

“Hello, angel,” he smiled down at the blinking, whimpering bundle wrapped in the plushest, softest blanket Cas owned. “Everything’s okay. Daddy’s here.”

Big blue eyes blinked at him in confusion, staring back as if demanding an answer to what was going on.

Six months, two weeks, and three days old, Sarabeth Blake Novak looked the spitting image of Castiel. Well, except she was a baby and a girl. And bald. Though she does have some blonde tuffs, an uncommon color in the Novak family, still mostly bald. But, hey, she has his nose and eyes so as close as you can get with babies.

Little Beth had been an unexpected but very welcome surprise. She was the result of a one night stand. Castiel considers it a miracle that she’s the only one, considering the amount of one night stands his brother Gabriel has had.

Long story short, Castiel has an adopted daughter, and she won’t. Stop. Crying.

As if hearing his thoughts, the very, _very_ brief stare down quickly crumbled into crying. Again.

Great.

“Please stop crying,” he begged, scooping his baby out of her crib stationed at his bedside.

He had tried leaving her alone to work through her crying on her own, but when that didn’t work he tried changing her diaper, feeding her, burping her, everything and anything he could think of. Even singing proved to be useless. Tired, irritated, and in desperate need of sleep. Castiel didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t call his siblings. None of them had experience with children, so they wouldn’t know what to do. His parents were awful at parenting, automatically leaving them out of the question.

In desperation, he googled ‘baby won’t stop crying.’ One hand holding his phone while the other held his daughter to his chest, he clicked the first link leading to some baby website.

It was a forum to talk with other parents for advice. The first person wrote, “ _Please help me!! My baby will not stop crying. I’ve changed him, bathed him, sang to him, and all the classics. Nothing that I try is working. What do I do?!? HELP!”_

Cas skimmed the results quickly and stopped on the one with the most likes.

 _"Call_ Mommy’s Helpers. _They are a 24-7 nanny service who will send someone to your home to help you with your baby. They’re AMAZING!!! They put my twins to sleep in no time flat. I would have never known that one of my twins had colic without them.”_

Hope filled Castiel as he swiftly held down on the phone number to highlight it. His phone dialed the number written in the description.

_“_ Mommy’s Helpers.  _This is Arti speaking. How may I help you today?_ ” a perky voice answered the call after ringing for a few moments.

“Hello, yes,” Castiel continued to pace around his bedroom, bouncing Beth in hopes that it would sooth her screams. “I need your help. With my baby. S-she won’t stop crying, and I don’t know what to do. Can you send someone here?”

She responded to his panicked frenzy with an ease that showed how much she had to deal with parents like him. “ _No problem, sir. I’m just going to have to take some of your information, and we’ll send one of our closest nannies right over to sooth your baby. Do you have a nanny preference? Some parents prefer to have women nannies over men, but we guarantee that all our nannies are experienced and knowledgeable._ ”

“What? No, I don’t care,” he stopped and continued in confusion. “I just need _help_.”

“ _No problem! Let me just get your information_.”

* * *

 

“DAMMIT!” Dean slammed his hands on the steering wheel. He slouched back in his seat and rubbed his eyes in frustration. The stupid car!

Dean had picked up the ’67 Impala eight months ago. It had been towed to Bobby’s Auto Shop after getting into a tussle with a semi-truck on the highway. The surprisingly alive owner left it there, having given up on the costs to fix it. Since then Dean had been patching up the black beauty, slowly getting closer and closer to what he imagined it would be once he was completely finished. He thought she was all set after some repairs he had done last week.

Apparently not.

He let out a tired sigh and looked around at the side street he had pulled off onto when the engine had started to make a strange groaning noise. Soon enough it had shuddered to a stop and refused to turn back on. He seemed to be in the suburbs of Lawrence, though on the opposite side of town from where his family lived. Shoving the keys into his pocket, he slid out of his baby, silently praying.

He popped the hood in hopes of a quick fix only to get a face full of smoke and steam. Coughing and waving the gas away, he grimaced at the engine. There was no way for him to fix it here. His toolbox was over at Sam’s house from fixing the staircase railing earlier this week.

Great. Now he has to call Bobby to tow his ass back to the shop. With Ellen’s permanent presence wherever Bobby was that meant she would be the one to answer the Auto Shop’s phone. Which always turned into him arguing for ten minutes that she didn’t need to know why Dean wanted to talk to Bobby, then listening to her lecture on how she didn’t raise his butt from an angry, mopey tween to be a man who can’t even answer a simple goddamn question.

A lot more tended to be said after that, but Dean always tunes after “men don’t know nothing and _you_ are not an exception, Dean Winchester.” It was their strange routine that Dean really didn’t want to deal with right now. Grumbling in annoyance and frustration, he dug his cell phone out.

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me!” Dean mumbled to himself as a black, dead screen stared uselessly at him. He shook it and waited. Nope. Nothing happened. “Son of a bitch.”

Looking around him for the nearest house, Dean spotted a small red brick house not too far from him. Though Baby wasn’t going anywhere, Dean still locked her out of habit and gave her a reassuring pat. She’s may be a hunk of junk right now, but she’s _his_ hunk of junk.

He reluctantly headed toward the house and up the driveway. Once he got to the front door, Dean knocked solidly in hopes that someone was home. The front porch lights were on and a car is parked in front. It was late into the night to be interrupting strangers, but he didn’t have much choice. The last he checked it was about 10:30 or so. Dean hoped they hadn’t gone to bed yet.

The door swung up to reveal the most gorgeous, frumpled man Dean had ever seen. He didn’t even know how that was possible. Dark almost black hair was swept up wildly and slightly greasy over the bluest eyes Dean had ever seen. The blue was even brighter in contrast to the deep purple circles underneath his eyes. His t-shirt was wrinkled and stained with what looked like either food or puke. The grey sweatpants were in pretty much the same condition. Yet the only thing Dean could focus on was that the stained shirt was just _high_ enough that he could see a happy trail and muscled lower stomach.

“You’re here,” the man breathed in relief. “Thank goodness. I didn’t know how much longer I could take the crying.”

And suddenly he had an armful of crying baby and a smaller version of those same blue eyes staring directly into his. Teary, red-faced, and also exhausted, the baby looked at him woefully, obviously in as much distress as his (or her) father. Not quite sure why a stranger was shoving their baby into his arms, Dean acted on instinct.

“Hey there, little buddy,” he smiled and shifted the bawling babe into a better position.  “You been wearing out dear ole dad here? There’s no need for that.”

“Her name’s Beth,” the man began to spew, grabbing one of Dean’s arms and pulling him into the house. With a baby in his arms, Dean had little choice but to follow. “She’s been crying all week long. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She’s always been such a _good_ baby. I’ve tried everything I can think of. Normally, a little talking and a walk around the bedroom makes her go right back to sleep. Is something wrong with her? Maybe, I should take her to the doctor. Why didn’t I think of that before?! I’m calling her doctor.”

“Whoa, calm down,” Dean shushed now both daughter and father. Double whoa. _Two_ sets of blue eyes staring him down? He needs to sit down. “Um, do you have a TV?”

The man stopped mid-turn about to assumedly get a phone and looked back at Dean in confusion. “A television? Yes. It’s in the family room.”

“Great! Where is that?” he winced as a particularly loud wail was released directly into his ear.

Dean followed the man down the hall into a medium sized family room. A small TV lay on the far wall with a well-worn couch set up in front of it. A small coffee table lab between the TV and the couch with the remote lying on top. Grabbing the remote, Dean turned the TV on and swiftly began to flip through the channels while still swaying with Beth crying into his neck.

“What are you doing?” the man asked, clearly bewildered. Dean ignored him. The man wanted help, Dean would help.

Stopping once he hit the right channel, Dean sat down on the couch. He kicked his boots off on the floor and swung his feet up to the opposite end. Now comfily splayed out on a stranger’s home in front of their TV, Dean adjusted said stranger’s baby so that she was laying belly down on his chest and looking towards the TV. Her wails stopped as the TV caught her attention. Her little eyes cleared as she stared.

Rolling waves spread across the screen as a pod of Killer Whales played about in the ocean. His ears rang from the sudden silence as only the soft documentary sounds filled the room.

A few minutes later and Beth was sound asleep on his chest. Dean carefully and steadily moved back into a sitting position. His eyes darted over to her gaping father leaned back against the wall for support.

Once he finally stood up – sleeping Beth still soundly so – he looked pointedly at her father. The man snapped his mouth shut and lead Dean down a different hallway. He held a bedroom door open for Dean.

The nursery was obviously thought through. Dean couldn’t see everything without the light on but it looked like there was a hand painted tree on the opposite wall from the crib. Off one of the branches was a bee’s nest, bumblebees painted along the walls with flowers as if they were buzzing about with ease. Toys were stacked neatly in a plastic chest, various baby bouncers and rockers filling the empty space in the room.

Dean gently laid Beth down in her crib, holding his breath so as not to disturb her in the slightest. Once his goal was accomplished, he swiftly left the room, closing the door behind him. He couldn’t see where the beautiful stranger had gone. Dean traveled back to the family room where the man was staring intensely at the killer whales as if trying to unlock their secret.

“Um,” Dean shifted, lost for words perhaps the first time in his life.

“How did you know that would work? Do you do that for all your clients?” the man asked Dean in awe. His gaze turned from the documentary to meet Dean’s eyes.

“My, uh, brother has two kids. That always worked on his one and a half year old when he was younger,” Dean explained awkwardly, not answering the second question because what the hell did _that_ mean? “Can I use your telephone? My car broke down a little ways from your house.”

“Oh! Oh, of course. Yes,” the man nodded emphatically. He grabbed a cordless telephone from a handset and headed towards Dean. “What’s your name?”

“Dean. Dean Winchester,” Dean swallowed as those blue, blue, _blue_ eyes became ever so close.

“Dean,” he repeated, rolling the name around in his mouth as if burning it to memory. “I’m Castiel. I mean, obviously, I’m Castiel. You knew that already.”

Dean’s eyebrows furrowed, “Why would I know your name?”

Castiel now looked slightly confused, “I assumed the agency would have told you. I doubt they would just send their nannies to someone’s house without giving them any info.”

Castiel thought Dean worked for some kind of nanny agency.

“I don’t work for any agency,” Dean shook his head, embarrassed for both himself and Castiel. This is awkward. “My car broke down and your house was the closest in walking distance. My phone died so I need your phone to call a tow truck.”

Comprehension slowly dawned on Castiel as a knock came at the front door.

A young man’s voice called through the door, “ _Mommy’s Helpers_ nanny services!”

Castiel’s face burned red as he opened and closed his mouth in horrified silence.

Dean shrugged and smiled slightly in amusement, “You’re welcome?”


End file.
